Ballyhoo! is getting ready to hit the wild world of Warped Tour and is getting tons of support from fans to help get them on the road this summer through a site called Kickstarter. But Ballyhoo! is not just simply getting donations, they are giving back something to the loyal fans too.

Ballyhoo! compiled a 19 track, B-Side album titled Medium Rare. With unreleased, live, and exclusive material, Ballyhoo! is sharing the album with those that help support their summer tour and aid in finances for the greenest tour bus out there, a Rock-It Ship.

The Pier got in touch with Howi Spangler, guitarist and vocalist for the Maryland based band, and he had so much to share about Warped, Medium Rare, and getting support from the fans. When we asked Howi how long the band had been preparing for a B-Side album, he told us some amazing inside details about the album.

“We’ve been talking about a B-Sides record for a couple years, but we really wanted to get a new full-length out first. Before Daydreams, it had been 3 years since we’d put out a legit album.

We finally saw an opportunity with our Kickstarter campaign. We had to come up with some good incentives for people to pledge and help us out. We immediately thought that creating an exclusive album for our backers would be a great idea. We have a lot of material lying around that we’ve never used for anything. Some of the songs are rare and had limited pressings on old compilations from The Pier and Sense Boardwear. We thought it would be great to get those out there again.

Other tracks are b-side material from our older albums. Fans will also get to hear the first recordings of some songs from rehearsals. Those were fun to listen to again. On “Radio”, you’ll just hear me mumbling melodies over the music and “Cali Girl” is really, really slow. There’s also a dub track I did while on the road last year. I like to make beats to pass the time.

Over the last couple weeks, we combed through whatever live stuff we had on our hard drives. We’ve recorded a lot of shows over the last 8 years or so… Some just weren’t properly mixed and were a mess. We found some good ones though.”

With 19 awesome songs collected throughout the years, we knew that there are probably more Ballyhoo! hidden gems so we asked Howi where those songs are at. Howi shared, “There were a couple jams from Daydreams pre-production that we left alone and a couple b-sides that we might want to rework for later, so you won’t hear that stuff for a while. All in good time.”

With Medium Rare as the greatest incentive to donate to the band’s summer with Warped, Howi also delved into the impact of working with Kickstarter and getting this green bus called a Rock-It Ship, which gets insane gas mileage, to get them around.

“Warped Tour is going to be the hardest tour we’ve ever done financially and physically. There will be absolutely no hotels on this trip. In the Rock-it Ship, we found a vehicle that has bunks like a bus, but gets twice the gas mileage that our van gets. That means we can be a lot more comfortable and also do the “greenest” tour we’ve ever done. We think it’s important to try and minimize our carbon footprint while living the dream.

We hooked up with Kickstarter to help offset the cost of the tour. The $12,000 that we’re asking for will help soften the blow. As right now, we’re up to $7,000 with less than 20 days to go, so we’ll see. Our fans are the greatest!”

To support Ballyhoo! and get a sweet album of exclusive music that the band pulled out of their own collection, hit up Kickstarter by clicking HERE

Howi Spangler of Ballyhoo! performing an acoustic version of “Scarlet Blue”

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2012 at 12:39 am and is filed under Daily News, Law Records.
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